Amnesiac City

Under the Skin

[This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.]

I intended on this session being the finale for AC, and it definitely felt like one. The players knew it going in and treated it accordingly, brilliantly.

I used the iPad’s DMDJ to give atmospheric city noises and the group even had fun looking for sounds. I might see if any of your Soundcloud pieces will be fitting for Call of Cthulhu next week. I know Bakerloo by King of Woolworths sounds train-ish. Also tracks by Squirrel Nut Zippers and Pokey LaFarge, for tunes which sound like they’re in the right era.

Anyway, Amnesiac City.

We started with a flash forward. Day 47. Mayoral Siggy Ensler and Sam Sanders are talking about city security on a television as waves lap up against it. A boat is beached, people are screaming and there are gunshots. Police sirens draw near.

Roll credits.

It’s Day Ten. Allison, Dunne, Eve and Owen set off from the pharmaceutical office they crashed in and skip the queues. They confront the guard about what they’re here for. They want to access the card-making machine, not to find out where they live like all the others. They’re let in as long as they don’t bother anyone.

They walk to the basement, and you can see the players don’t expect to be let in. Dunne swipes his card in the machine by the thick metal door. Nothing. Allison swipes his card and is let in. The room lights up with flickering bright white lights. Monitors wake up on the walls and while there’s no computer, there’s a big metal machine with a hole to place your hand in. And six long metal scorpion-tail-looking arms pointing towards the hole.

Dunne suggests Eve and Owen put their hands in, but they want someone expendable (him) to do it. Allison decides to sod them all, puts his hand in and is immediately identified as a Warden. He’s asked if he remembers and after a moment’s thought, says “yes”. The lights go out, then flash red. There’s a noise from the floor, like the ground itself is shifting. In a moment of panic, trying to cancel what’s happened, Allison tells Owen to put his hand in the machine. The metal spikes all plunge into his wrist, pinning him there and not at all stopping the oncoming horror. The ground peels away from Dunne and he dives away as gloved, claw-like hands grasp for his feet. He aims for a Trash Man, one of three pulling themselves out of the ground. Owen’s screaming and passes out when he tries to get out of the trap. Shaun and Steve are told to roll for something, but I don’t say what. Allison sees the ground rip open and the sewers below are raising up, allowing dozens of Trash Men access to the room, and in the distance, getting nearer, The Judge.

Allison looks at the room, yells to Dunne to get Eve out of there, then runs down into the sewer! He decides he’ll try and lead them away as they were after him, and after ripping Owen off the machine (sans arm), most of the Trash Men do follow. There’s a smash as the wall next to the vacuum-sealed door is broken in. Four guys and a police battering ram yell for them to get out. Dunne grabs Eve and runs as the Trash Men come for him. When they’re out of the room, the wall seals back up. Dunne looks through the window of the door, which he’d tried to shoot out. In the darkness, a Trash Man’s face looks through the window and plucks the bullets out. Then goes back, into the darkness.

The Wardens smuggle Eve & Dunne out of the building. The second they’re outside, they ask Dunne if he’s a Warden. He gets in a fight with one of them, a woman dressed as a police officer. The scuffle ends with everyone having guns drawn, and trying to keep from being noticed by The City. They make their way to the junk yard, which isn’t used, given the Trash Men’s interference. The rescuers are Dr Floyd (played by Alex), Wendy Brogan (played by Shaun), Ulysses Christie (played by Jacob) and Rutger (played by Steve). They keep Dunne in the dark, realising that he’s not a Warden, even if he’s trusted by Eve and was trusted by Allison.

He’s sent home by Negroponte, a driver whose item was a GPS device which can track people. Dunne’s flat is small and sparse. He has a beer, finds that he’s a limo driver and has a sleep.

Days pass. He’s still not trusted by anyone other than Dr Floyd (who will trust anyone). They plan to isolate and kill a Trash Man, to see if it can be done. A daft idea, but they need to know. Dunne isn’t allowed near the boss.

In Ashfield, [Blank] is training his people up and as they control the dairy, they’re scouting Naraka via milk float. He has a dream that Sky Father is angry. The Wardens he should have killed escaped, and as Naraka has dealt with one of them, then a sacrifice will have to do instead. He sees the beach, and the sand is washed away to reveal Christine underneath. [Blank] wakes and starts sending his children out with the milk floats, acting as scouts.

Dignam (now played by Alex) and Christine are found by the Wardens on the edge of town. Christine’s a wreck, mute, shaking, clutching her bow and arrows. Dignam found her alone in the woods. Jacob elected to take ‘emotional detachment’ and ‘suspicion’ as derangements, both voluntarily. She’s skittish and when they talk about quiet ways to take down a Trash Man, she suggests her arrows. Dr Floyd uses the RU486 which Dunne has, making a poison for two arrows.

During this time, Tuford (played by Shaun) is enthusiastically trying to follow [Blank]‘s wishes, calling him ’father’ and getting really jealous that [Blank] is more interested in finding Christine. He gets lost in the city and spends a week trying to live off stray animals (of which there are very few).

The Wardens decide to smash a café in a park, so that they’re in an open space. That way when The Trash Men come, they can isolate one, kidnap it in a police van (stolen by Dignam and his police ID card) and take it apart. As they debate about how best to vandalise the café, including Wendy Brogan secretly putting explosives inside. Christine smashes a window and everyone hides. Badly. When the Trash Man Van turns up, rumbling into the road, the streetlights flicker out. Two Trash Men head to the café and one of them immediately notices Rutger and walks towards him. Christine’s first shot does nothing to the Trash Man replacing the window. She fires another shot. And another. Rutger and Brogan rip the Trash Man who’s after them apart with shotguns and it still claws at Rutger, slicing his arm open. They load the legless thing into the back of the van and drive to a barn out in the woods.

The thing, the Trash Man, is operated on. They tear the gas mask off, which is hooked into his head. The skull opens up and something pours out from where the brain should be. Something blackened which smells of burning plastic. When the front of the gas mask is yanked out, a long plastic tube is in his mouth and there’s a horrible ripping noise when they tug it out of him. Dead eyes track any movement near it. Torn arms reach for anyone nearby. The jaw has been broken to fit the tubing and the teeth removed. Even worse, the Wardens recognise it as one of their leaders, Scott Lerner (an antagonist in season one who was murdered by The Judge). Christine stabs it in the throat and it doesn’t die. She rips the head off and again, it’s looking for a target. In the end, they make a pyre and burn it.

Tuford is found by [Blank]‘s children, pale, starved, and without Christine. He’s really apologetic and desperate to prove himself.

Dunne and Dignam share a flat, with mattresses from the mall which is less of a shanty town than it was in the first days. People are finding their homes now, about 40 days in. Things are looking much more normal. Christine stays at Dunne’s flat and he tries to get her to open up, be more human. He and Dignam take her to the beach, now that the Wardens are trying to fit in with society less (Dunne’s City Awareness is at 3/10 now, so he needs to slip away more).

scouts spot them at the beach, and he drives Tuford to the site, gives him a gun and waits in the car park.

It’s a busy day at the beach. Families are playing, people are relaxing, cafés are full. It’s nice. Dunne and Dignam are trying to get Christine to relax, but she’s tense and a little crazy. Her composure breaks a little when she sees Tuford, her friend. He’s pale and thinner thanks to malnutrition. His hand is behind his back. Tuford pulls a pistol out and fires. Dignam takes the bullet for Christine, and panicked, Tuford fires wildly. People panic, they scream, they flee. As Tuford’s about to take a second shot, a small yacht smashes into the beach, knocking him, Christine, Dunne and Dignam aside. We pan out and see [Blank] drive away, and police cars driving to the scene of all the chaos.

And that is the end of season two.

This was a good season, but not an easy season. It felt hard, brutal, with no one safe and a lot of horrible PVP decisions to be made. People got the tone though, and played to it. Despite some frustration with Alex, he really brought his a-game and even got the finale’s MVP vote for playing a legion of NPCs. He did mention that Allison wasn’t seen dead. [discussion about Allison which none of you need to see]

In Which Tuford Becomes a Man

This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.

We had another session of Amnesiac City yesterday. It was one of the more ‘nothing’ episodes, and yet had some of the darker moments.

Before the session, I had the character creation whiteboard rubbed clean and a list of ‘truths’ about the season end, given that it’ll be the start of season three, and when both season one and two casts merge.

Town founder “S. Ensler” is alive.

Talk Show Host Sam Sanders is alive.

There is a curfew.

Abraham still controls the box stores.

It’s Day 47.

EVERYTHINGENDS ON THEBEACH

I said that one more was “* Christine and Dunne are alive” because those are the characters of the players who weren’t in season one. removed description of an argument about plot immunity for the sake of brevity

We opened with [Blank] drawing up plans for the town. People were to start cutting trees down near to the town, and start making a wall. Kids were to learn archery, after all, the statue of Sky Father was a bearded man in a horned helm, with wings and arrows in him. So bows and arrows it is.

Allison, Dunne, Eve and Owen realised that a police cabin they’d broken into was not a good place to hide, as The Trash Men would be by later. They spoke to the chatty neighbour, O. David, and kipped on his floor. They saw that a lot of people are really normal and friendly. The next day they went to the home of founder, N. Arulpragasam, which was a gated house nearby. They saw crazy writing about “Yama” everywhere, and mentioning “the heart of the city”. The biggest contraband Allison’s warden had seen was there, a book on theology from Earth. That’s not good. He hid it, pocketed some of the antipsychotics which were loose around the house and left.

[Blank], Tuford and Christine designed a flag for their town and he had an impromptu archery contest. All the while, Carpenter kept watching Christine. Ashfield’s in a good way, all apart from some of the girls who have been missing, but no one really notices.

Dunne and Allison went to the city hall where people were lining up. Apparently a CC Robertson (the voice from the police line, although I don’t know if the players noticed) could open city hall’s doors and was giving people their addresses. Most people are staying at the stadium, at the mall or dotted around in some of the skyscrapers. They conspire to come back when it’s dark.

At night, Christine and Tuford go to their ‘den’, the funeral home. They’ve been putting anything of interest in there and playing, but tonight they can hear a noise. It’s a digging sound. It’s Carpenter, and a woman who looks like she’s sleeping. Neither child notices that she’s dead, and Tuford immediately confronts Carpenter, to see what he’s doing. He lies and the kids go, along with Craig the Argentinian Mastiff (played by Steve). The kids go off to bed.

Dunne and Allison come up with a plan. They pretend to be attacked by people and seek shelter in the city hall, where Robertson and two men with submachine guns are staying. After a while, the suspicious trio let Dunne, Allison, Owen and Eve in, but only to show them out the back way. The questioning makes Robertson even less easy, and Allison is insistent on getting Eve & Owen keycards. Also getting himself and Dunne keycards which allow them access to everywhere. Really insistent. They’re shown out and escorted by a guard, to an office building. Horowitz, a man who woke in prison and was freed by the group in Season One, has made the offices into a shelter, having looted bedding stores for mattresses. There are a ton of people, and the quartet plan to try the city hall in the morning. Dunne had his address given to him and looks out over the city, trying to get a grip on where his apartment block is.

In the daytime, Tuford starts digging at the hole to see what Carpenter was burying. He doesn’t find anything, as Carpenter’s smarter than that.
Christine is called over by Carpenter who says Tuford’s hurt his head in the alleyway. “Again?” she moans. Shaun says, “How did I get in the alleyway?”
“You’re not.” I tell him.
A second later, he realises what this means.
Carpenter has parked a car down the other side of the alleyway, unloops his strangle wire and tells Christine that she shouldn’t scream. No one will believe her. She goes for him with a knife and is smacked. At that, the dog goes nuts. Craig bites Carpenter’s arm, Christine stabs him and he beats the dog savagely. He backs away, saying that he’ll tell everyone the dog bit him and no one will believe Christine’s accusations, so she beats him around the head with a bin-lid. He drops, frail man that he is, but is noticed by passers by. Cook restrains Christine while Berman drags Carpenter away and [Blank] deals with the dog. He’s tied up near the church, angry and covered in blood.
Christine is kept in a schoolroom and convinced Reed, the teacher (and constant victim of the group’s behaviour) to let her go to the bathroom. She whacks Reed’s ankle and runs away, only to reach the woods and hear a barking get cut short.
Tuford is brought to the dog by [Blank], and told that the dog bit a man, that he’s bad and has a taste for human blood. He needs to be put down, and Tuford’s the only one who the dog trusts. Tuford gets Craig some water, cleans him off, lets him drink, then slits his throat.
Christine flees, with people searching for her until dark. Something’s in the woods, almost dog-sized. No, bigger than a dog. Bigger than Craig. She runs back to the school, steals a bow and a dozen arrows, then runs out again. She goes to sleep in the crook of a tree, in the dark. As she’s drifting off to sleep, there’s the noise of a dog’s paws padding nearby, and she almost sees some rust-red fur, then falls asleep.

A quiet session for the most part, but with some dire consequences. [Blank] is training child soldiers and going full-on Kurtz. Christine and Tuford are broken up. Allison and Dunne are in the city, but unsure what to do. They have goals, but they know that Eve and Owen don’t want to cure the amnesia, Owen even openly said that the memories are cleanly gone and never coming back. They simply want to restore order.

The Trinity Arrive

[This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.]

Last week, [Blank] blew himself, some worshippers and the statue of Sky Father up using the second bathtub of nitroglycerin. He ran, took shelter and BOOM!

We start with [Blank] looking down at Naraka, at Ashfield. People are driving down from what looks like a power station. He can hear a voice. Sky Father. He says that [Blank] doesn’t need a name, doesn’t need an identity. He had been remade. Purified. They are all the children of the city and they are all perfect. But there are those who are not. They call themselves Wardens. There are false prophets, the people from the statue (Dave, Eve and Owen), the Wardens and those who work with them. They are unenlightened. They are not pure, and must die.

Tears in his eyes, [Blank] has purpose. He falls, faster and faster until he’s yards from the ground. Then he wakes up. He rallies the believers around the crater, and has a speech to tell them…

Christine and Tuford walk back through the field of cows, Tuford is bloodied from his savage beating at a farmer’s hands. Craig the dog is happy, and licking the blood from Tuford’s hands. They decide to take a cow with them and rope it. They both know enough about animals to get it in order and start walking it to the town. The power is back on, and they have a cow to get milkshakes from.

Dunne, Dignam and Allison have left Dave and some engineers back at the power station, and drive back, only to see engineers travelling to the station and some bloodied kids with a cow and dog. They stop, recognise them and suggest they take the kids to the hospital. Christine holds a knife up, threatening them. Dignam offers to walk them back as they won’t leave the cow. Dunne and Allison investigate the dairy and find the black hieroglyphic eye painted where there was once a basement. All the blood’s cleaned up. All sign of life is gone.

Back in town, [Blank] fails to encourage the people at the dig site, but he and Wyngarde have been winning over a ton of people who are looking for answers. Apparently ‘Sky Father’ is enough, although they’ll need more soon. [Blank] gets his flock to start searching for Dave, Eve and Owen, as they’re all targets of his. He’s aware that Dunne said he was a Warden (even though he isn’t, and didn’t know what they are).

As it gets dark, Tuford gets his wounds patched up, dosed with painkillers and Christine, a force of chaos and curiosity, gets him to join her in going to the graveyard. Tuford optimistically joins in and they stomp around. The small building on the edge of the graveyard is the funeral director’s, but looks like a mausoleum. Tuford is small, even for a seven year old, and squeezes through the bars with little effort. He looks at the computer and it doesn’t mean anything to him. He lets Christine in and they push a display gravestone over. Then she looks at the computer and they find pictures of themselves, as well as medical histories and school districts. No parental information. They go to bed, after looking at some unmarked graves.

Allison and Dunne scour the streets for Eve and Owen, eventually arriving at Kirk’s bar, where they’re hiding and drinking. People are asking questions about the two scientists, and they’re getting jumpy. Dunne is still looking for answers about the painted eye, but even they don’t know anything. Apparently during construction if things fell apart, they would be rebuilt with the eye painted on it. Dunne and Allison sneak Eve and Owen out of town, to the dairy, and they stay up, taking watches through the night. Allison sees a massive garbage truck drive to the power station and rings them up, telling them to be careful.

The next day, it’s dawn and Wyngarde is getting people organised for a sermon in the park. [Blank] discovers what the kids found, and asks to be shown the computer. He starts making notes about everyone’s details, addresses and jobs. The main things he sees are that Kirk isn’t Kirk (he’s someone called Q. Warren, whose address is next door to Kirk’s). [Blank], Dunne and McWilliams are not native to Ashfield. The kids have done well, and now [Blank] is able to go around, telling people where they live and what they might want to consider doing, saying that Sky Father has provided.

Allison and Dunne are tired, but set out to Naraka. They drive past more farms and a petrol station with people on deck chairs on the roof. They wave at the car as it goes past. “They’re probably mad,” Allison says. The city is glorious, and Dunne is immediately more at home. They discuss the plan of action and apparently there are three founders; McWilliams, Ensler and Arulpragasam, who should know how to stop the problems here. The problems not being the amnesia, but the forces also at work in the city. The group break into a police station and start scouring for anything they can. Dunne has a chat with a friendly neighbour who’s asking if they’re police. He refers them to Allison who says that yes, they are, but they can’t find their keys (a lot of that going around, what with the amnesia). It’s all rather friendly, and they discover that they can get new ID cards from city hall. Their plan is: go to city hall and get access cards for everywhere, and find these three people (Arulpragasam’s house is nearby, Ensler’s is at the marina and McWilliams is in the presidential suite of a hotel). Shaun is pleased to find out McWilliams’ first name, Roland, according to the scientists, although they’ve not met him before. The rest of the group realise that these are the trio of people their old characters met in underground labs, who promised to ‘free’ them if they stepped into a special box and let a button be pushed.

[Blank] confronts Kirk, telling him a few ugly home truths and hears some uglier stories. Kirk is Q. Warren, and heard a gunshot in the next house. A man next door killed himself after scrawling everywhere that ‘the experiment failed’ and ‘Arulpragasam was right’. He buried the body on Day Two when the group were killing the mad farmer. His secret is kept, but [Blank] investigates the house where real Kirk was. He reads confirmation that Sheriff Morris, Dignam, Allison and Kirk were Wardens.

[Blank] makes a house call to Dignam who tries to brush him off, saying he’s got an errand for Allison. He flees from [Blank]‘s holy soldiers (all armed with knives) and runs out back. Of course, [Blank] has people there, too. He says that he is just, he’s kind, and throws Dignam out of the town, never to come back. Dignam walks into the wood and [Blank] walks back into town. HIS town.

Countdown

[This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.]

We start with a boom. In the woods, [Blank] and Wyngarde celebrate that the Sky Father’s plan is coming into fruition. In the town, Allison and Dignam both race to find out what’s happened. Dunne and the Sheriff split up in their rush. Dunne is nonchalant, not caring about the people, while the Sheriff, for all his bad behaviour, wants to make sure the populace is safe.
The Big House is a crater, a wreck. Crowds are gathering. Carpenter, Benny’s killer, says that he heard that Benny and McWilliams were going to go in there to drop off supplies, covering for their disappearance. Allison tries to maintain order and [Blank] starts calming people down for the sake of the Sky Father. [Blank] and Wyngarde have the church, which they’ll keep people in for safety. Dunne loses track of The Sheriff. No one’s seen him, and expects that he’s gone up in flames, too.
When it turns midnight, every television, every monitor, shows a red screen and a countdown. 24:00:00, and it’s going down.
All in all, a bit of a weird night.
Day Six begins in a school. Children are waking up, they’re crying, they’re panicking. It’s chaos. The kids are anywhere from six to sixteen. Seven year old Tuford (Shaun, and according to him it’s Tufford) and ten year old Christina (Jacob) are amongst the kids. Dignam sees all of the kids running riot, gets Allison to help look for teacherly types. Almost every house is inhabited now, with hundreds of people in the town. They’re pulling together, more of a community, aided by the people who were there in the first days. There’s no roll call, as there are no police. Instead, [Blank] tries to summon others to help uncover Sky Father.
Dunne eventually finds a sign of The Sheriff. He’s on the police station roof, watching everything. He’s paranoid that the killers of his men are everywhere. Dunne is typically unhelpful and they come to an impasse. Dunne wants in on whatever regime the Sheriff starts, and the Sheriff wants proof that he’s looking out for the town. He wants Dunne to infiltrate the Sky Father fanatics and find out if they did this. If so, he’ll rain hell on them. Dunne eventually agrees.
Allison arranges for a town meeting in the park and rounds up some of the kids. Christine’s made to look after Tuford, and a poor woman who’s enlisted as teacher (the woman Billy/Wilson/Crutchley, Shaun’s old character slept with). Dunne tries to get supplies from the general store, but the guy in charge of it, Naraghi, is a waster, or just doesn’t like him. The Sky Father worshippers arrange for a barbecue and a bit of a happy-clappy gathering around the statue later.
Unnoticed, the countdown’s still ticking away.
At the town meeting, there are HUNDREDS of people. The kids are fidgety, with [Blank] looking after them. He’s promised milkshakes and a barbecue. The Sky Father guys keep sabotaging the meeting, driving their agenda forward while Dunne hangs with them, trying to get into the group.
The late afternoon barbecue takes place around the mostly-unearthed Sky Father statue. Several people are there, just to see what it’s like. Allison and Dignam are back in town, and talk on the radio to a woman named Robertson in Naraka Central Police Station. She tells them about the situation in the city, which is similar, but on a much larger scale, and with no religious zealots. She’s not a cop, and doesn’t know what’s going on with the countdown. Like one or two of the Day Fivers, she says that she saw a man on the television before the countdown came on.
In the woods, a man excitedly goes off to get firewood with [Blank] and Christine. Tuford climbs the statue, falls and hurts himself. Christine sees something and runs off, finding a dog there. Yay! A doggie! The guy with the axe starts hacking away at a tree and noises are heard. The trees are moving. [Blank] backs away as the guy keeps chopping. Out of the trees, the Trash Men appear. They grab the man, snap his neck and drag him back to the woods. They see [Blank], but one of them puts a finger up to where his mouth would be. He’s safe, but his City Awareness score has increased.
Night falls, and only a few of the adults are left at the barbecue. Allison and Dignam stick by the police station, guns ready for when the countdown runs out. Dunne and [Blank] are by the statue. The base of it is visible from all the digging, and in the wooded darkness, a crack appears in a line around the base, and part of it pushes inwards, light flooding the pit. It’s a door, and it’s opening.
In Ashfield, the countdown reaches zero. Then the lights go out, street by street, spreading across the neighbourhood, closer and closer. The light pollution in the city goes out. The power is gone from everywhere, and they’re in the dark. All except the pit, where a form moves out from the light.

Chekhov's Three Bathtubs of Nitroglycerin

[This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.]

We started with Steve’s new character in the woods. He was staked to something, suspended in the air. A woman and a jumpy guy found him. They took the man down and he saw that he was attached to a giant statue, half-hidden in the earth. It was a bearded man, struck by several arrows. He’d been hung on the stone arrows.

The woman introduced herself as Wyngarde, the jumpy guy was Radd. They asked his name. The card was blank. He had a panic attack at that. Then he saw he had a list of six names, one of which was crossed off. Were they him? Were they targets? He didn’t know. All the overacting from Steve had his character, [Blank], played by Nicholas Cage. Wyngarde suggested he should stay here and be introduced tomorrow. He fled into town, shocked by everything, and saw the township of Ashfield.Dunne and Crutchley found him and took him to The Big House. Fielding, outside, said that if Blank misbehaved, he’d get curb-jawed and he panicked at that as well, running into Benny’s Diner for shelter. Dunne spoke with the Sheriff about working in an unofficial capacity with him, then used his new powers to check into a local house by breaking in.

The next morning. Dunne got up, showered, had a nice breakfast, then noticed that the door he’d kicked open was completely fixed. Not just that, but there was a massive hieroglyphic eye painted on the front of it. He broke into a couple of neighbouring houses to find fitting clothes, found one such house where a woman was dead inside, having killed herself in the bathtub, blood and water spilled over the side, a straight razor on the floor.

Benny and D McWilliams started to arrange for pancakes and coffee for the morning roll call in the park (all charged to the diner). They saw a butcher’s and a grocer’s. In fact, all the other businesses weren’t open, and while the meat in the window of the butcher’s was going off, there were large freezers inside. Benny started to plan. Wyngarde and Blank started to talk about what was happening. The statue in the woods, Sky Father, Wyngarde called it, was holy. This whole place was holy and they’d been reborn, but The Sheriff and his men were wrong. They were taking control, being violent, ruining things. She convinced him that The Sheriff was power-mad and needed to be brought down.

More people were arriving, so The Sheriff was busy with that. Dunne decided to tell The Sheriff about what happened (starting a LONGLONGLONG chain of Dunne reporting every move to The Sheriff after being so anti-everyone last session). He sent Guillory and Dunne to take the body to the graveyard. Benny heard that and decided to see what the graveyard was like. Blank and Wyngarde started interrogating the locals to see who would be receptive to their plans. Billy (Shaun’s character’s child persona) was useless, Benny had some good ideas but wanted profit and order over all else. Berman was helping out with anyone’s medical needs and Kirk was sat on the gazebo, far away from anyone else.

Dignam and Allison were paired up to ‘search for other people’, or more likely to pretend to coincidentally find their homes. They both had maps of key locations. Their homes, Kirk’s home (well, it was the house next to where Allison saw Kirk beaten up), Dignam’s home, Allison’s home, The Big House, the Community Centre and the farm where Wilson/Billy/Crutchley woke up. They talk about legitimising their searching of the farm by gathering people to ‘secure the outlying area’.

Wyngarde and Blank keep digging up the statue. Wyngarde shows him the tent and rope Radd started with, the shovels she’s found and the camo netting she’s been covering the statue with (the glory of it must be hidden until The Sheriff is gone). During this time, Radd walks past with two plastic containers of some yellowish liquid. He’s got some ideas. Wyngarde thinks he’s fixing a digger to vastly help with their uncovering of the statue. After a few hours, Radd’s not returned from wherever he is and Blank is sent after him. Benny can’t find a grave with a legible name or date on it. They’re all too worn out. The ground looks undisturbed around them, but then off to the side are graves The Sheriff’s men have dug, the only recent ones around.

Benny breaks into the butcher’s (morality roll failed, no derangement gained, now he’s morality six). He and McWilliams take the place over and he arranged for her to live in the apartment above the butcher’s so someone’s always there (they did break in, after all). He takes the spoiled meat to the diner in case there’s anything salvageable to put into the diner food. McWilliams is to run the diner while he runs the butcher’s. He eyes up the general store next, as liquor would sell very well here.

Dunne and Fielding have an argument, Dunne snaps, punches Fielding who shoots him in the leg. He goes to the hospital where Berman’s looking at the fixed pharmacy and suspicious spray-painted eye on the floor. Billy slept in the ward outside overnight and heard nothing. She patches Dunne up and he’s brought into the search party with Crutchley, Dignam, Allison and Bailey, one of the deputies. They try breaking into a car, fail, are told off by Guillory (still bloodied from the swift burial of the dead girl) and walk out to the farm. There aren’t animals. No birds, nothing. The bloody “1” Crutchley left on the population sign is still there. Carpenter visited Benny in the butcher’s, saying he’d found his place in Cherry Street and wanted to throw a barbecue, so he arranged to buy some meat for it and turned down the offer to manage the butcher’s.

At the farm, the group can see the distant vista. There are farms all over the place, fields, and a power station off in the distance. The power lines stretch all the way through Ashfield and to Naraka. They start searching. The body which was all shot up was gone, and Crutchley saw his original item, a Dictaphone, had been left behind. It was full of whispering, but he could make out the name, “Billy” amongst it.

Allison went to the stables and found an opened weapons cache (a red metal sphere with a keycard to unlock it) with two revolvers and four packs of bullets, hid it and carried on. Inside the farmhouse, the others were searching for things. Dunne found keys to vehicles and started looking for them. Allison started talking to Dignam and saw something out of the farmhouse window. Looking down at the cornfield… there was a giant eye burned into it, like a crop circle.

In one of the barns, Blank wandered in, searching for Radd. He was by a digger, certainly, but wasn’t working on it. He had three bathtubs he’d filled with…something. He got Blank to put a mask on and explained that he wanted to go into the crawlspace under The Big House, plant all of it, get the deputies into the building and blow it up. Yes, he’d made nitroglycerin. Blank wasn’t sure what to think about this and the pair ranted at each other, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Bailey ran out of the farmhouse, kicked open the barn’s front doors and pointed like he had a gun. Blank ran away immediately. Radd started edging towards the bathtubs. The others caught up and didn’t notice what he was making. Instead they saw the digger and suggested using it to carry all the canned goods they’d found in the farmhouse back into town for anyone to take if they needed it (in town, Benny twitched and didn’t know why).

Night fell, and Dunne trashed three houses around town after chatting with The Sheriff. He thought it’d be interesting to see if they fixed themselves. Crutchley had nowhere to live, not knowing his Wilson persona was staying in the diner. He went to the community centre where most people were bunking, seduced a new girl and they fucked in the kitchen. Blank hid in the crawlspace under The Big House, listening to The Sheriff and Dunne’s conversations.

The next day, and there were enough new arrivals to drown the deputies during roll call. At a close count, it made just over 100 people in Ashfield just on Day Five’s beginning. Benny started grooming two people to work in his stores (after breaking into the general store). One of his people was on Blank’s list, suspiciously. McWilliams asked to talk to Benny, but he was busy taking ‘thank you meat’ to The Sheriff, and making sure he was okay with legitimising his temporary takeovers of these stores. They would all be returned to their owners in time.

Blank used the roll call to creep around The Big House, seeing empty files in all the boxes, and another weapon cache, this time with a shit-ton of bullets. He ran to Wyngarde & Radd, saying that The Sheriff knows nothing. He’s evidently a mad despot and needs to be taken down.

Allison, Dignam and the deputies went around with the ID cards of the new people collected up, checking houses and making sure everyone had a place to live.

Blank was digging with Wyngarde when Radd ran past, into town.

Billy woke up, freaked out that there was a naked woman in the kitchen with him and he was all sticky. She freaked out and ran off.

Benny spoke with McWilliams and she said something odd turned up. She showed him the apartment and the phone. On the handle was a four-digit number and the name, “K. Carpenter”. But… he had a home in Cherry Street. He had meat taken there. Benny said that they should go there and he’d have a perfectly reasonable answer.

Dunne checked the buildings. They were all fixed. They were all marked. He broke into one and started to look for tracks. There was a footprint on the kitchen floor, going into the wall. He was confused by that, then heard the sound of bricks moving behind him, span around, gun out. There was nothing. (out of game, I told him to add a dot to his “City’s Awareness” track. Everyone freaked out. Lee didn’t know what was happening I have removed the rest as I told Nic about the stat’s mechanics).

Carpenter greeted Benny and McWilliams charmingly, he was wrapping an apron up and explaining that he was just preparing the meat for the barbecue. Benny saw the basement door was open, there was a flickering light, and the noise of crying. Carpenter went to clean himself off from all the… meat. McWilliams checked the phone and it was an H Cihra (the crossed out name on Blank’s list). Benny said he was going to the bathroom and crept down the stairs. McWilliams chickened out and stayed behind. He went further and further down until he saw three women chained up in the basement, pleading for help.

Dunne tried to convince The Sheriff about the weirdness going on, but he wasn’t buying it and insisted on being shown the buildings.

Allison saw Guillery being taken off of the housing detail and sent to The Big House as The Sheriff wanted to speak to them all.

Billy left the community centre, which had a brass icon of the hieroglyphic eye above the door. O’Casey said that he was a suspect in the recent ‘giant eye’ graffiti and took him by the ear to The Sheriff’s office, where all the officers had been called. Inside stank something fierce. O’Casey, Bailey, Fielding, Guillory and Billy all saw Radd, done covering everything in a noxious-smelling liquid. He smiled, a tear in his eye. Then he flicked his lighter.

Allison and the Day Fivers in the streets heard it. Blank and Wyngarde in the woods heard it. The Sheriff and Dunne heard it by a house with a giant painted eye.

Benny didn’t hear the explosion. Instead, he turned to see Carpenter stood there. He shouldn’t have seen this, Carpenter explained. It’s not safe outside, especially not for women. They’re safe down here. Benny tried running but was pinned. Carpenter took out a strange-wire and started choking the life out of Benny. Carpenter reassured the shopkeeper that he wouldn’t get the same treatment as the girls once he went, and thanked him for bringing McWilliams. After flailing wildly, Benny’s body went limp. Dead.
Carpenter started to whistle and dragged McWilliams’ unconscious body down, down into the basement.

Two more characters dead, half a dozen NPCs dead, Lee’s character freaked the hell out, more of the world shown and now, at the end of day five, they’re further than the other characters ever were.

The worst thing is, Carpenter’s deed won’t be noticed. Unless something hideously unlucky happens, his actions are not intended to come to light. Just to make the group more uncomfortable. Shaun’s original character’s wife is now kidnapped. Day Six is around the corner and Jacob’s going to make a child, as on the sixth day, the children arrive. The Sheriff is pretty much the only remaining lawman, the zealots are getting excited about taking things over. Last night started slow and had far less player/player interaction than I’d have liked, but it ended pretty damn well. With the bathtubs full of nitroglycerin, Shaun asked when it became Fiasco.

Martial Law

This is a session report originally sent to Nic Williamson who was briefly an In-Fighter. It’s going to refer to players and their characters, it’s going to have a couple of ‘behind the curtain’ things. Also the grammar and tenses may be awful. I can’t let that go and will have amended what I can, but there WILL be errors.

We started with Lee’s character waking up by a lake. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie and black driving gloves. He looked around and drank a little from the lake before exploring a little further. An old man called out and said he came to in a deck chair on the other side of the lake. There was nothing there, so he wandered round this way. The pair went through the woods, talking about their lack of memory and not knowing which way civilisation was.
There was a crunch in the woods. Another one. Then one right behind Lee’s character, who span around. When he looked back, the man was being dragged away by a noose. There was a man in the shadows, pulling him further into the dark. Lee’s character made a quick getaway, figuring that the old man would keep them busy.
He wandered down a path towards town (as shown on a sign, Ashfield, 1 mile) and met a blonde woman in a red dress. She had no memory and as he looked fishy, she thought he might have drugged her. The two argued and he carried on down the path, with her nearby, holding her item, a can of mace.

In town, Hayden woke up and ate some of the breakfast Allison was cooking. They went outside and saw The Sheriff assigning people duties, searching houses and guarding the outskirts of the town. Anyone from the woods who looked hostile was to be put down. They couldn’t have an incident like yesterday. Shaun’s character was in “Wilson” mode, the passive vegan who was allergic to everything. We defined his other personalities as “L Crutchley” (the egomaniac) and “Billy” the child.
The trio went around in Hayden’s pickup, checking off streets, seeing if their keycards worked in any houses and making sure people weren’t trapped in their homes. They saw a suspicious man walk out of the woods and immediately sounded the pickup’s horn. Hayden went out, confronted the man and put his hand out to block him coming into the town. The man put Hayden in an arm-lock just as the police all showed up. There was a tense confrontation which stopped when O’Casey, one of the deputies, suggested they all go to the diner and talk this out.

The Sheriff and Lee’s character, who found out his name was L.Dunne (he also found a bottle of zopiclone in his jacket), had a nice chat. He was told that he should move on if he didn’t take orders well, and if he was amenable, then he could help the effort in town. The woman found out her name was D.McWilliams and Benny took her on as a waitress. Benny went to the hospital to read up on the antipsychotics he had as his item and decided to start giving them to Shaun’s character, who was in full “Billy” persona.

The search effort from O’Casey and Dunne (annoyingly Lee decided to stick with O’Casey rather than a player character) turned up a doctor. An attractive woman who had stayed in her home, figuring that she was having some head problems, what with the amnesia. H Berman, apparently. Dunne pointed out that they had wounded (Billy, shot in the back last session) so she set out to find him and the hospital. Dunne, O’Casey, Berman, Benny and Billy went into the creepy hospital to sort out the bullet wounds.

Given that Dunne was not smart about medicine, Benny asked that he fetch more antipsychotics and gave more to Billy. Berman started to operate.
In town, Allison (now Francis Allison, because that is so much manlier) and Hayden (Andy Hayden) were going through homes and saw one was open. They went inside and saw Fielding, one of the deputies. He had bloodied knuckles and was talking about having shown Kirk a lesson for stealing medical supplies. Hayden was good with that as how to treat a thief, Francis less so. He got Bailey, the kid who had been shot at, to see to the wounds. They grabbed the medical supplies, told Fielding to walk it off and went to the hospital to make sure the supplies were back where they belonged.

Now, with all the players in the hospital, things started to happen. On the way to the pharmacy to drop all the drugs off, Hayden, Allison and Dunne noticed one out of all the many, many hospital beds, had an occupant. Dunne yelled at the sleeping man who got up with a shot, hands gripping round Hayden’s neck. He immediately said, “Allison? What’s happening?”
And everyone freaked the hell out. How did this man know who Allison was? Allison and the man, Dignam (which he said without checking his wallet) tried to cover tracks, and Dunne left to get The Sheriff. Allison and Dignam tried not to dig themselves deeper, but when they obviously weren’t coming back, Dignam pulled a hammer out from under the bed and smacked Hayden round the head.

Elsewhere, Wilson woke up, afraid that any of the painkillers he had been given would cause an allergic reaction. Benny and Berman were weirded out by the change, but Benny was getting used to it.

Hayden whacked Dignam with the hatchet, and yelled at Allison to help. As did Dignam. Hayden took another hit from the claw side of the hammer and started to run. Allison shot him in the back and he tried to crawl away, down the hallway, only to get shot again. Dignam walked up to him and finished the job with the claw hammer.

Hearing the shots, Benny started to look around for who did it. Dunne was only slowly going to The Sheriff’s office, so the deed was done when they turned up. The other players scowled at Alex and I while Allison and Dignam quickly got their stories straight. There was a minor confrontation, but things were okay, no one was any the wiser in-game. Dunne went to check on the body and to see if anyone had disposed of it, only to see that the body, and the blood, were all gone.

In the background, bricks from the wall slid back into place, by themselves, unnoticed by Dunne.

Welcome to Ashfield

This session is missing. I couldn’t find the original write-up.

Here is the information from the session bible about the events of the first two days which roughly happened this way. A brief ‘behind the curtain’ look is that the names of the NPCs were all determined randomly and only had role names. I’ve removed anything too spoilery.

PRE-GAME

Day 0 – On the 0th day, a few wardens used Ashfield as a base of operations. One of them was going to be ‘Sheriff’ anyway, and they circled the wagons. One of the prisoners had woken up and escaped from the first day batch. They were collected after finding a shrine in the rough form of a person. No one knew what this was, but it seemed to radiate heat. The prisoner was cuffed and dragged back when the sirens went off, knocking all remaining people out.

Day 1 – On the first day, The Sheriff and a handful of others in Ashfield woke up. They didn’t explore far, and one of them, E.Milman, went into the woods. There were screams and they managed to see something attacking him. From then, The Sheriff & The Enforcer started putting up signs not to go into the woods. The Sheriff called a meeting in the Big House to announce their protection and that no one’s getting in or out until they figure out why no one remembers anything.

SESSIONONE

Day 2 – More people wake up, placed anywhere people weren’t already looking. Generally inside. We start here. The players wake up from this point on. If the city is seen, it’s burning. The Berserker goes nuts, quite early on, plunging them into a state of emergency and hopefully trying to make the town seem dependent on each other.